*
I didn’t cry.
Don’t let anyone tell you I did. People expect certain weaknesses from girls. But they don’t cry over a man they’d never loved, could not love, even if he said he respected the swagger of her insouciance, her post-punk rhetoric, even though he said maybe and she said she couldn’t. I didn’t cry for Phillip.
I didn’t cry for any of them.
I didn’t.
I swear.
9
Oh, god.” The words clattered out of Faiz. “Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god.”
He repeated them until they hitched in his throat, always snagging on the second syllable, until all it sounded like was Faiz saying oh and oh again, quieter each time. He sagged to his knees. The knife slid from his fingers.
“I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Phillip moaned. The sound could have meant anything.
“Don’t,” Lin told me again, his mouth in my hair. I could feel his jaw mold the consonants, the motions of his lips. “There’s no point. We can’t stop the bleeding. We’re five hundred miles away from the nearest hospital. I don’t have anything—” His voice tore. “He’s going to die, Cat. He’s dead. He’s dead. So, don’t look. Don’t.”
I did anyway. I shrugged his embrace apart and shambled towards where Phillip lay, bile and blood soaking into the mouldering straw. I read somewhere that it takes about twenty minutes to die from disembowelment, which doesn’t sound long at all but hurt has a way of stretching out a heartbeat into an infinity of going colder, slower, every breath another starburst of too much to cope with, lighting up the cerebrum with constellations of anguish. Phillip’s eyes were rolled up to the whites and he stank of piss. I didn’t know someone else’s pain could have a texture, a bite, a gelatinousness you could hold in your teeth, but I could almost gnaw on Phillip’s dying.
“Cat.” Faiz knuckled at his own eyes, crying without embarrassment, his face a slaughterhouse of bruises and reds. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean—you know I wouldn’t hurt anyone. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
The ohaguro-bettari laughed. The sound was a knife, was a hole like an eye opening beneath the ribs, was the memory of one man being held up to the shining light of another, one man being less than, second-best, always inferior to the other. The sound was a thought: wouldn’t it make all the sense in the world to let that lack of self-worth move your hand, just a little, just for a second while no one’s watching?
“You’re sorry,” I repeated. I wanted to touch Phillip, let my fingers drag through his hair, the pale strands clumped to his cheek like letters and when I scrunched my eyes a certain way, they almost read like liar.
“Sure you are.” Lin’s voice shook. “Sure. Abso-fucking-lutely. You have absolutely no motivation at all to kill the guy your fiancée used to date. The Greek god to your sedentary geek. No reason. Nothing like that ever crossed your consciousness. In fact, you’re so sure about this being an accident, you can guarantee this never crossed your subconscious either.”
“Are you saying I murdered him?” There was no threat in his voice, only incredulity, shame in the slurry of his speech.
“I did not. The words ‘Faiz murdered Phillip’ never crossed my lips. Nope. No, sir. Or any variations of the statement. Ask Cat. She’s right here. She’d tell you if—”
“Lin. Stop it.” The ohaguro-bettari had moved again, blurring from where she’d sat behind us to kneeling at Phillip’s head, his skull pillowed on her lap. She crooned to him with a mockingbird’s warble. His breathing slackened. “You’re not helping the situa—”
“What situation?” Lin grinned wider, half-screaming, arms flung out. He spun like a top and the yokai twirled with him, expressions ecstatic. “There’s no situation here. Faiz absolutely did not take advantage of a situation to murder Phillip. No one would dare dream about saying anything like that. Not with the knife still in reach.”
“Lin!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” M’awwy. M’awwy. Faiz burrowed his face into his palms.
My lungs felt full. Heaving with earth, and wet concrete, and fingertips grated down to the bone. I swallowed and snarled: “The book—does anyone remember what the fuck the book said?”
Both men shut up.
“I—” I ran a hand through my hair, swallowed, swallowed again, but the reek of Phillip’s insides persisted, a sour caul gloving my tongue, the back of my mouth tasting muddily of coins. You know there was nothing in that book, a voice in my head reminded me. But we’re past that. This is past logic. “You said it was a bit of blood, a bit of cum, a bit of bone, and a bit of organ.” I swallowed a third time, ran my tongue over my teeth. “Do either of you remember if it was meant to be fresh?”